A call to arms

I’ve been wanting to branch out a bit with my 40s sewing and try something other than the pattern I made up at 1 o’clock in the morning three years ago. One of the patterns I picked up is Simplicity 1587, a reprint of a pattern from the 40s. I made a mock-up, probably a year ago now, and started on the adjustments before getting distracted by Butterick 6018.

I pulled out my adjusted 1587 pattern a few weeks ago and made another mock-up. It was almost there. Almost. In the past I would have called it good enough and moved on – after all, arm movement is a luxury, not a necessity – but now it’s time to fix this thing and luxuriate.

My adjustments to this pattern include

• Square shoulder
• Broad shoulder
• My own magic armscye fix
• Large upper arm
• Making the 3/4 sleeve a long sleeve
• Widening the hip yoke
• Moving the zip from the side seam to the back
• Removing the peak and gathers from the centre of the skirt waistline, ‘cos, wow, that looked bad! (Going by other blogs this is a popular change.)

Usually I would omit the facing as my experience is that they just cause trouble without any great advantage but this one actually worked nicely. I sewed it down at the shoulder seams and between that and the zip stitching it all stays in place.

The square shoulder adjustment affected both the front and the yoke. Because of the way they fit together I had to do the yoke adjustment on the diagonal which took a bit to get my head around but seems to have worked.

The fix to the square shoulder and my armscye fix counteract each other so in the future I think I will try doing square shoulder only on the top half of the armscye and see if that turns out neater.

The large upper arm adjustment most confuses me as I don’t have a large upper arm relative to me or relative to average. However, without it, I have uncomfortably limited movement, even with all the shoulder adjustments. Or maybe they exacerbate the problem.

I bought a lovely, lovely, lovely fabric from Lincraft. I am indifferent to the print but it feels beautiful, drapes exactly right and doesn’t static the way a lot of these dresses do. So one black dress (very like the original envelope) was my plan. The fabric was a bit jelly-like and inclined to stretch, so to handle that I sewed all the seams with a tearaway backing. I’ve not used this technique before but it was very successful – I had no trouble with unstable seams.

Then my aunt was clearing out her mother’s stash and gave me a collection of fabrics. This included a very nice, light floral and navy print. I think it must be lawn or voile. I did a burn test so I know it is at least partly an artificial fibre which is probably why it doesn’t crumple very much. Unfortunately there was just not quite enough. No amount of creative laying out was going to get me all the pieces from the fabric. So I scoured the stash for something that might match. There was a skerrick left over from my chemise dress petticoat in just the right purple and a similarly light weight. Sadly it doesn’t quite have the same crease-resistant properties as the print but I don’t think I could do any better (especially since I wanted to start cutting Now). On the plus side, the plain colour means the yoke pleating is actually visible and not lost amongst flowers. 

Most of my 40s dresses have the zip starting a couple of inches below the neckline and close with a hook and eye, or have a v-shape in the back. This allows enough opening for the dress to come off over my hips as no-one sells zips long enough for my waist-to-hip ratio. For these dresses I decided to forgo this convenience and started the zip itself at the neckline. By 'decided' I mean I forgot on the first one... but it looked so much neater that I did it on purpose the second time.

Both dresses went together quickly, bar a pause due to running out of thread (both times!) and they fit very comfortably. They have no discomfort in the arm and shoulder region which is a nice change so I think my adjustments were the right thing to do.